You’re looking at the dais and seeing all these eminent people

[GoodTaste]

Is the word "dais" in its usual sense ("a raised surface at one end of a meeting room that someone can stand on when speaking to a group" - Cambridge Dictionary)? If so, the speaker seems to mean "You're standing on the dais and seeing..." because a dais is for someone to stand to speak and only there you can mostly see the audience before and around you.

Instead, the speaker seems to mean the entire meeting room of Congress to be a dais. I am not sure whether she uses this word correctly.

====================

In May, epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers made a rare outing amid coronavirus stay-at-home orders. She had been called for the first time in her career to testify before Congress—and she was intimidated. “You’re looking at the dais and seeing all these eminent people. It’s a really powerful experience,” she says.


Source: Science
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...-bridges-gulf-between-science-and-us-politics

 

[GoodTaste]

Rivers is not on the dais. The members of the congressional committee are.

Even when she's testifyibg, she doesn't stand on the dais? What definition do you give to the word "dais" here?

 

[GoodTaste]

A raised platform, usually at one end of a room.

Isn't this raised platform small enough to allow only one or two persons to stand there? But what the speaker says is all the eminent people (of the Congress) whom she is looking at:
You’re looking at the dais and seeing all these eminent people.

 

[emsr2d2]

She's choosing to call it a dais, regardless of whether the rest of us might think of a smaller platform than one that can hold all the members of the congressional committee.

 

[GoodTaste]

So she is using it in an unsusal way?

 

[emsr2d2]

It didn't strike me as unusual when I read the original piece. Perhaps it helps that I have seen video of these congressional hearings so I know that the committee sits on a raised platform at the front and the person testifying sits facing them, at ground level, in front of a microphone.

 

[GoodTaste]

Here's Zuckerberg testifying before Congress:

 

[emsr2d2]

All of those people are at a higher level than Zuckerberg so I would say that all the long benches and chairs they are using are on a raised platform, which the original speaker chose to call a dais.

Honestly, GoodTaste, the only person who can tell you why she used the word "dais" is Ms Rivers.

 

[GoesStation]

GoodTaste, how can you read "You’re looking at the dais" and think it means "You're standing on the dias?" Please put more thought into your questions before posting them.

 

[GoodTaste]

GoodTaste, how can you read "You’re looking at the dais" and think it means "You're standing on the dias?" Please put more thought into your questions before posting them.

Haven't I clearly quoted the standard definition of "dais"? It is officially referred to as a raised platform for someone, rather than for the people of the entire Congress, to stand. The way that the speaker uses "dais" is so unique that only she herself knows why. I follow standard English, not follow her unique English. Here is a situation of Someone vs. Congress. If "dais" is for someone to stand, then she is someone standing there to look at the Congress. That is why I read that way. Period.

 

[tzfujimino]

I think she used "dais" because she felt a sense of awe and respect for those people on the raised platform.

 

[GoesStation]

You quoted one definition. There is no 'official' definition.

Nobody has suggested that the entire Congress is standing there. It is also possible to sit - as the members of a congressional committee normally do.


It is perfectly normal and natural.

The question being answered and suitably discussed, I'm closing this thread.

GoodTaste, remember that you are a learner. Don't tell native speakers how to use our language.